Herbert Wrigley Wilson - With the Flag to Pretoria

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN VISITING HER WOUNDED SOLDIERS.

By H. W. WILSON
Author of "Ironclads in Action," &c. &c.

ILLUSTRATED MAINLY FROM PHOTOGRAPHS AND AUTHENTIC SKETCHES TAKEN IN SOUTH AFRICA

Vol. I.

LONDON
Published by HARMSWORTH BROTHERS, Limited
1900

The chief point of interest in the South African war, apart from its political aspect, will always be that it was the first great struggle fought out under the new conditions which smokeless powder has introduced. No invention has made a greater change in the art of war than this; the revolution is so profound that it can only be compared with that brought about by the general adoption of firearms four hundred years or more ago. So late as the Spanish-American war of 1898 a large part of the United States army was equipped with the Springfield rifle, firing smoke-producing powder, so that in that war, in spite of the fact that the Spanish Army was supplied with the Mauser, the full consequences of the revolution could not be observed and ascertained. The British Army, when it took the field in October, 1899, was face to face with factors the precise effect of which could only be conjectured. Magazine, or, to give them their older name, "repeating," rifles had been employed as far back as the American Civil War of 1861-5, though they were in every way vastly inferior to our modern Mausers and Lee-Metfords. But smokeless powder was a distinctly novel element.

It is easy to ascribe our defeats in the early part of the war, as some have ascribed them, to the "stupidity" of the British officers and generals. At bottom, however, it would seem that much of this unsuccess was due to the new conditions of war, coupled with the Boer's inherited capacity for taking cover and his absolute knowledge of the country. Again and again our men came suddenly and almost without notice under a deluge of bullets from perfectly invisible rifles. When once engaged in this manner it was difficult for them to go forward and dangerous to retreat. There was no means of guessing the strength of the foe. No dense clouds of smoke revealed at once his location and the exact volume of his fire. It was uncertain whether we had to deal with 500 men using magazine fire, or with 5,000 firing in a leisurely manner. There may have been a neglect of reconnaissance, yet against troops thus concealed personal reconnaissance repeatedly failed. On their side the Boers had no such difficulty to face in fighting us. All through our earlier battles we disdained the use of cover and often advanced to the attack in comparatively close formationsa splendid target.

The same invisibility which marked the Boer riflemen marked also their artillery, which was not massed, but scattered gun by gun, wide apart and artfully concealed. As one result of this disposition, we seldom succeeded in silencing the Boer weapons; but, on the other hand, except at Spion Kop, they inflicted trivial loss upon us. The enemy's most effective gun was the "Pom-Pom," which, though it caused infinitesimal loss of life, was especially dreaded by our soldiers for the great rapidity of its discharge. The frequent flashes from its muzzle, however, rendered it comparatively easy to locate and to put out of action.

It has been often debated whether as science progresses war grows more bloody. A learned Russian, M. Bloch, had argued, before this struggle began, that the deadliness of modern weapons rendered mutual annihilation of the two combatants probable. It need scarcely be said that this forecast has been disproved by events. There has been nothing in the present war in the least comparable with the hideous butchery of Borodino, when, in 1812, with the old flint-lock smooth-bore musket and smooth-bore cannon, over 30,000 French were killed or wounded out of 125,000, and over 40,000 Russians out of 110,000.

Excluding prisoners, in no case did the British losses in battle reach one tenth of the force engaged, and in the Spion Kop fighting, where the heaviest casualties were incurred, they were spread over a week. Another striking feature is the low proportion of killed. Usually in the past the killed have numbered one-third to one fourth of the total wounded. In this war they have generally been from one fifth to one tenth, and sometimes an even lower fraction, as a result of the use of the small-bore bullet. Not only so, but an enormous number of the wounded have recovered. Thus, taking the Casualty Return of July 11, we find that of over 12,000 wounded only 695 have died. In Napoleon's day the proportion would have been more like 5,000, and in the era of the Franco-Prussian war 3,000. Clearly, then, the risk to life in war is not increasing. Disease is as deadly as ever, but it may safely be said that much of our loss would have been preventable with a better hospital organisation.

We have been asked by several correspondents to set forth in a short table the losses in the battles recorded in the present volume, and we take the opportunity of doing so, adding a rough estimate of the Boer force opposed. The Boer losses, unhappily, cannot be ascertained with the slightest accuracy, and even the estimates of their armies are largely conjectural. It should be noted that only combatantscavalry, artillery, and infantryare included in our figures, and that deductions are made for details absent at the base, for the sick, and for men not present for duty. The numbers in one or two instances differ slightly from those of the text of the work, the latest official returns necessarily differing in some cases from the figures obtained on the battlefield.